Scientists demand halt to damming of Europe’s last wild river

Europe’s last wild river is about to be tamed. But it won’t go without protest.

More than 200 scientists from 33 countries this week called for the Albanian government to halt plans to construct the first dam on the Vjosë, which flows 270 kilometres out of northern Greece through remote Albanian mountain canyons to the Adriatic Sea.

“There has been no environmental assessment of the damage the dam would do to the river and its ecosystems,” says signatory Friedrich Schiemer, a hydrobotanist at the University of Vienna, Austria.

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He says the river is of “global significance”, particularly for birds that breed on the huge islands downstream of the proposed 25-metre-high dam at Poçem. Once completed, the dam will dictate flows downstream according to electricity demand rather than the needs of river ecosystems.

“The Vjosë is the last big, wild river in Europe outside Russia,” says Ulrich Eichelmann of campaign group RiverWatch, which organised the scientists’ petition to save the river. “We are trying to stop these projects and instead establish the first European Wild River National Park.”

Unexplored ecology

The river already has a small dam on one of its Greek tributaries. But hydrologists say its flow downstream through Albania remains mostly unchanged and its ecology largely unexplored.

“We might know more about rivers in the Amazon basin than about the Vjosë river,” says Eichelmann.

The Balkans has lately become a hotspot for dam construction in Europe, with more than 600 proposed, says Eichelmann. Albania has plans for eight hydroelectric dams along the Vjosë alone.

Despite past election pledges to protect the river, the government in May awarded contracts to Turkish companies to build the dam. Energy minister Damian Gjiknuri told news agencies in July that the government was determined to proceed. “A developing country cannot be a museum,” he said. “Hydropower has drawbacks, but every development has a cost to the environment.”

Development also threatens a major body of freshwater in neighbouring Macedonia, where Europe’s oldest lake, Ohrid, and its unique ecosystem is at risk because of tourism.